Publishing with New Harbinger

Our Editorial Mission - Real Tools for Real Change

Our books are grounded in science, careful research, and empirically validated clinical practice. For more than thirty-five years, New Harbinger Publications has brought readers effective and scientifically sound self-help books that deal with a range of topics in psychology, health, and personal growth.

We publish concise books that are easy for every reader to understand and are written by respected and experienced clinical professionals.

Our dedication to these standards has made us the first choice for both general readers and professionals looking for effective, reliable information.

Why you should choose New Harbinger over a big publisher

You’ll sell more books. While we have a strong frontlist, we are a solid backlist publisher. This means that your book will sell year after year, not just in the first year. The average New Harbinger book sells 7,000 plus copies the first year and then reaches steady sales of 4,000 to 10,000 copies in succeeding years. Books we published six years ago have now sold 60,000 copies, and they will continue to sell at steady rates for years to come. The average book at a big publisher sells 5,000 to 7,000 copies total.

You get the best of both worlds. Most of our titles sell very well in bookstores. But for any book, bookstore sales diminish after the first year. That’s when the big publishers give up. We continue to promote your book through direct mail and e-mail to mental health professionals, health care and psychology institutions, spas, and lists of likely buyers. Our books can be found in all the major booksellers, libraries, special mail-order catalogs, Costco, Sam’s Club, and large-chain pharmacies, as well as nontraditional markets like corporate accounts, health care providers, spas, retreats, academic settings, continuing education schools, health food stores, Veterans Administration hospitals and libraries, military agencies, New Thought churches, and more.

There are no middlemen. We have in-house sales teams that sell directly to the major chains (Amazon and Barnes & Noble), so there is no middleman; thus authors earn more on sales. The sales and marketing team embarks on many targeted sales campaigns each year. In addition to marketing plans such as direct mail and e-marketing, each member of our sales team does outreach to specific markets. This kind of hands-on approach helps us identify new markets for our books and build relationships with the key players in each of these markets. We go further by working with the authors of our books to identify special markets for their books and put plans in place to use our team’s talents and tools to reach these markets effectively.

You’ll sell internationally. We sign approximately ten foreign translation contracts per month. Rights sales have been increasing approximately 25 percent each year in the last five years. We attend the London Book Fair and have attended the Frankfurt Book Fair twenty-one times and Book Expo America twenty-five times. Our success lies in our foreign rights manager’s close personal relationships with agents and publishers alike. They all know that she is incredibly responsive and genuinely cares about individual readers, wherever they are located around the globe.

You have access to a professional audience. We promote our books directly to mental health professionals. Big publishers don’t do that, relying only on bookstore and online sales. Psychology self-help books have a major audience of mental health professionals, and big publishers miss out by ignoring people who buy a lot of books and whose word-of-mouth recommendations are important to sales of your book.

You have input into decision making. With big publishers, nameless employees in the marketing department decide whether or not to promote your book. (Many books aren’t promoted at all because most of the publisher’s money goes to pushing the 5 to 10 percent that have the potential to become best sellers.) At New Harbinger, you have a personal relationship with your publishers. We listen to your input about marketing, cover and book design, new editions, and so on.

You’ll benefit from our attention to detail. We bring out approximately fifty books per year, and each one gets individual attention, follow-through, and quality control. You’ll receive consistent, high-caliber editing. Our editors understand how a book must be written to maximize reader comprehension, achieve favorable reviews, enhance professional user appreciation, and create good sales.

Can a medium-sized publisher guarantee a best seller? The answer is no, not the first year. But over time, your book can sell well over 100,000 copies because it continues to sell. That’s a substantial reward in recognition and remuneration.

What We Publish

We look for psychology and health self-help books that teach readers how to master essential life skills. Mental health professionals who want explanations of psychological techniques and health issues also read our books. Thus, our books must be not only simple and easy to understand but also complete and authoritative. Most of our authors are therapists or other helping professionals.

Theoretical Orientations

Many of our books are based on a cognitive behavioral approach. We believe that painful emotions and undesirable behaviors are often caused by distorted thoughts or inaccurate interpretations of events. To relieve a painful emotion or alter an undesirable behavior pattern, it is first necessary to uncover and change the underlying inaccurate self-statements. Cognitive therapy translates particularly well into the self-help format because it typically uses a lot of step-by-step exercises and homework.

We are also the leading publisher of books based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and mindfulness-based techniques. These third-wave therapeutic approaches offer many new, research-proven techniques that are making a major impact on psychology.

Types of Books

The following is a list of the types of books we publish.

Self-Help Books

An effective self-help book is one that teaches essential life skills. It isn’t about something—it teaches something. It may give information, spur insight, or inspire, but these are secondary goals. The primary goal is to train readers so that they can effectively deal with a problem. Our books address all of the major mental health issues, including:

Depression

Anxiety and panic

Anger

Stress

Trauma or post-traumatic stress

Building self-esteem

Parenting children with mental health issues

For examples of our self-help books, take a look at Stop Walking on Eggshells, Self-Esteem, Children of the Self-Absorbed, Disarming the Narcissist, Buddha’s Brain, and Calming Your Anxious Mind.

Psychology Workbooks

We are especially known for our skills-based and practical self-help workbooks. Our workbooks offer detailed and effective assessments, exercises, and checklists that help the reader cope with a specific problem by practicing skills in the book itself.
For examples of our quality psychology workbooks, take a look at The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook, Thoughts and Feelings, The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook, A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life, and The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook.

Professional Books

New Harbinger professional books are targeted to mental health practitioners such as therapists, counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists and are meant to provide step-by-step help for practitioners wishing to add to their knowledge base. Two great examples of our professional books are Handbook of Clinical Psychopharmacology for Therapists and ACT Made Simple.

Memoirs

Memoirs are first-person accounts of coping with psychological disorders. They include compelling and honest descriptions of how the disorder has affected the author’s life and how he or she was able to overcome the problem or cope with it in a healthier way. Memoirs help others in the same situation, provide hope, and teach the reader something new about human strength and resilience. They also are simply a good read. We look for memoirs on the following topics:

Depression

Anxiety and panic

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

Recovery from problematic anger

Recovery from trauma or post-traumatic stress

Recovery from a major mental illness such as schizophrenia

A few great examples of our memoirs are ADHD and Me, The Buddha and the Borderline, and The Sum of My Parts.

Gift Books

Gift books are small-format books that offer inspiration as well as practical tips and suggestions for the reader. These books are entertaining and positive, and the help they offer is based on the most current research on effective psychological techniques. Gift book topics range from relaxation and self-nurturing to relationships and coping with stress. Some great examples of New Harbinger gift books are Five Good Minutes and Just One Thing.

Series

The following is a list of book series we publish.

Newly Diagnosed

New Harbinger’s Newly Diagnosed book series was created to help those who have recently been diagnosed with a mental health condition. Receiving a diagnosis can bring up many questions. For example, who should the reader tell about the diagnosis? What treatments are available? What are the best techniques for managing symptoms? And how can the reader start building a support network? Our goal is to provide user-friendly resources that provide answers to these common questions, as well as evidence-based strategies to help readers better cope with and manage the condition so that they can get back to living a more balanced life. Two examples are OCD: A Guide for the Newly Diagnosed and Depression: A Guide for the Newly Diagnosed.

Instant Help Books for Teens & Kids

Instant Help Books offer easy and fun activities to teach kids and teens effective skills for dealing with a variety of mental health issues—skills they will continue to draw on throughout adulthood. Parents and therapists alike have found these books very useful in helping kids and teens cope with their feelings and thrive after major life challenges. A few great examples from our Instant Help series are The Anger Workbook for Teens, The Anxiety Workbook for Teens, Stopping the Pain, and The ADHD Workbook for Kids.

Loving Someone With…

The Loving Someone With… series includes books written specifically for the partner of a person with a challenging mental health disorder. If you have a loved one with mental illness, you know how disruptive and straining this can be to your relationship. These books offer support, helpful information, strategies, and real-life examples, giving readers all the tools they need to create a loving, healthy, and close relationship. Two great examples are Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder and Loving Someone with Attention Deficit Disorder.

Compassion-Focused Therapy

Our Compassionate-Mind Guide series is based on compassion-focused therapy (CFT), a therapeutic model that combines attachment theory, neuroscience, and mindfulness. Complete with worksheets, exercises, and meditation practices, these books include everything the reader needs in order to learn mindfulness and compassion-focused skills for coping with various mental health issues. Take a look at The Compassionate Mind, The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Anxiety, and The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Anger.

Thirty-Minute Therapy

The Thirty-Minute Therapy series includes convenient and accessible self-help books that provide readers with proven-effective skills to help them overcome or cope with symptoms that interfere with daily life. Each book is designed to give readers everything they need to know in the least amount of time. Check out Thirty-Minute Therapy for Anxiety and Thirty-Minute Therapy for Anger.

Whole-Body Healing Series

Our Whole-Body Healing Series combines the discipline of modern science with the wisdom of ancient healing. We feature books that use integrative and complementary therapies to treat common health challenges, such as osteoporosis, digestive health, chronic pain, and anxiety. A few great examples are The Whole-Body Approach to Osteoporosis, The Whole-Body Workbook for Cancer, and The Healthy Gut Workbook.

How to Submit Your Proposal

Your book proposal should give the New Harbinger editors a clear and specific idea of what your book is about. To be sure that your proposal accomplishes this, please include the following:

1. Prospectus

A two- to three-page overview of your book, including:
• The precise problem the book addresses.
• The new or breakthrough technique you use to treat this problem.
• Three key selling points that make your book stand out from the others on the market (for example, 1. This is the only book available on this subject; 2. By the author of the best-selling book…; and 3. Five million people suffer from this affliction).
• The intended primary and secondary audience for this book, including exact statistics about how large the market is.
• An analysis of the competition. Find at least three books that compete with yours. Include the title, author, date of publication, publisher, and Amazon ranking of competing books (under 10,000 is best). Give us specific details about how your book is different and about the new and compelling information your book offers that the competition does not.

2. Table of Contents

Include an extended outline of your planned book, including brief (two-paragraph) descriptions of what each chapter will contain.

3. Two to Three Sample Chapters

Please do not submit your entire manuscript.

4. Author Background

List your current occupation, credentials, any associations of which you are a member, and any biographical information that highlights your accomplishments in your field. Please do so for all authors involved in this project.

For publicity and marketing reasons, we generally do not accept proposals from authors residing overseas.

Due to the high volume of proposals we receive, the evaluation process typically takes two to three months. In all cases, we will get back to you as quickly as possible with our publishing decision. We look forward to reviewing your proposal.